The Golden Horde *** (1951, Ann Blyth, David Farrar, George Macready, Richard Egan, Peggie Castle, Marvin Miller) – Classic Movie Review 13,579

‘The great adventure of all the ages!’ The 1951 Technicolor film The Golden Horde is more colourful escapist nonsense from the Fifties, about the medieval clash of Christian crusaders and merciless Mongols led by evil Genghis Khan (Marvin Miller).

Universal International Pictures’ 1951 colour American historical adventure film The Golden Horde [The Golden Horde of Genghis Khan] is written by Gerald Drayson Adams, based on a story by Harold Lamb, and stars Ann Blyth, David Farrar, George Macready, Richard Egan, Peggie Castle, and Marvin Miller.

‘The great adventure of all the ages!’ Director George Sherman’s 1951 adventure The Golden Horde [The Golden Horde of Genghis Khan] is more colourful escapist swashbuckling nonsense from the Fifties, about the medieval clash of Christian crusaders and merciless Mongols led by an evil villain, Genghis Khan (Marvin Miller).

Gerald Drayson Adams’s silly 1220-set script (based on an unhistorical fantasy story by Harold Lamb) meets its match in Ann Blyth’s and David Farrar’s game but empty-headed star turns. Ann Blyth plays the Princess Shalimar, whose city of Samarkand, Central Asia, is terrorised by Genghis Khan (Marvin Miller), and David Farrar plays Sir Guy of Devon, the English knight who rides to the rescue, though Shalimar has guiles of her own to try to defeat the conqueror.

Elsewhere the acting is more full-blooded, with George Macready especially entertaining as Raven the Shaman, plus Richard Egan as Gill, Peggie Castle as Lailee, Henry Brandon as Genghis Khan’s son Juchi, Howard Petrie as Tuglik, Donald Randolph as Torga, and Leon Belasco as Nazza the Astrologer all good and giving effective performances.

Plus Poodles Hanneford appears as Friar John. Edwin ‘Poodles’ Hanneford (1891-1967) is one of the greatest trick riders, appearing in over 40 films.

Sherman directs purposefully and pacily, and Universal’s lavish production looks very pretty in Russell Metty’s Technicolor images, and the production designs by Bernard Herzbrun and Alexander Golitzen. Universal certainly put their heart and soul into it, whatever heart and soul a Hollywood studio of the Fifties might have had if they’d had them anyway.

 It is partly shot in the Death Valley National Park in California.

These were the days when a major movie could run just 77 minutes.

Marvin Miller (born Marvin Mueller; July 18, 1913 – February 8, 1985) was often cast as a villain, often in Asian roles, but he also voiced Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Invisible Boy (1957).

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,579

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